~ Canadian Literary Arts Blog

Monthly Archives: December 2011

Pages Books & Frontenac House invite you to celebrate In This Place: Calgary 2004 – 2011. Cadence describes In This Place as “the images, both written and graphic, of the themes that define the city Calgary. The overlooked, the feral, the discarded, the unexpected and mysterious. It is about looking backward and forward, inwardly and outwardly, like glimpses through a train window. These images are about the capturing of all the tiny moments and improbablke fragments, all theexuisite little slivers pulled from the stuff of everyday life. They are about the importance of finding beauty, meaning, and mystery in the place you live. These images are about a city that is in the process of transforming itself.”

Imagine a not-so-distant future in which everyone is HIV positive and, sooner or later, ends up in a state-operated hospice dying of AIDS. In a broken socio-economic order, governments have been reduced to a single function: extending the lives of their citizens with anti-retroviral treatment (ART) drugs. Meanwhile, rumours have coalesced into a widespread belief in the existence of a cure for HIV that is also exchanged through bodily fluids. Sex, casual, friendly or indifferent in all its forms offers a possible cure. Consequently, genders, sexuality and relationships have been altered drastically. Elliott lies in the hospice among the dying, his only remaining purpose: to serve as a subject for sociological and psychological research, research that is conducted via a nano-tech device to which the patient is wired. The device, called a Spade has a twofold purpose: to read and manifest Elliott’s thoughts along with bits of cultural detritus into his room, and to produce a tranquilizing effect on the patient.

Tyler Hayden recently completed an MA in English at the University of Calgary.